


Seeing Things

by ArgylePirateWD



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: BAMF Lionel Fusco, Forests, Gen, Horror, Monsters, POV Lionel Fusco
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-09
Updated: 2019-09-09
Packaged: 2020-10-12 23:03:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20572388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArgylePirateWD/pseuds/ArgylePirateWD
Summary: He knows concussion-wrong and he knows wrong-wrong, and this? This is piss-your-pants-wrong.Fusco, Finch, and Reese take a trip through the woods.





	Seeing Things

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wafflelate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wafflelate/gifts).

> So I played with _Seen only out of the corner of your eye, A pervasive yet unidentifiable sense that something is terribly wrong, Characters are all alone in the middle of nowhere with no one able to help,_ and _Character(s) are totally done with this ghost bullshit_ here. I hope it turned out okay?

He finally knows he's not going nuts when Finch takes off his glasses.

They've been trudging through these woods for what feels like forever, slip-sliding on fallen leaves, tripping over roots, dodging dangling branches and getting colder and colder as the pale sun sinks lower and lower. Lionel's never liked the damn woods. Not when he was about to die in them, not when he was burying people in them, not even back in the day when his granddad wanted to "make happy memories" and dragged him and his dad out camping.

God, that was a shitshow. Two city boys and a gruff old half-drunk geezer trying to make a Norman Rockwell-style vacation work. They wound up sleeping in Pop's old tank of a station wagon after Dad set the tent on fire. Damn thing still smelled like rotten fish from the one they forgot the last time Pop dragged them out to "make happy memories."

It's why he's never taken Lee out camping, why he's glad the kid does hockey and not the Boy Scouts. Nature sucks. The woods suck. And these endless goddamn woods suck worse than any other woods he's ever been in, even the ones he's almost died in. That's really saying something.

And what that something it's saying is is that something is off. Everything's felt wrong since he woke up in that cabin with Wonderboy and Smartypants and the worst headache he's ever had, and he doesn't think it's from the bruise throbbing at the back of his head. He knows concussion-wrong and he knows wrong-wrong, and this? This is piss-your-pants-wrong.

He can't explain it, either. Something about the slip of the leaves beneath his shoes isn't right. Something about the way the shadows fall isn't right, especially the ones he sees out of the corners of his eyes. Something about the color of the damn sun, or the slow-as-molasses pace of its descent isn't right. He ran into a tree earlier, tripped and smacked right into the damn thing, and it didn't feel like a tree should, more like something trying to be a tree—that's it. It's like the forest is trying to be a forest, only it's not hitting the right notes.

And it's giving him the creeps.

The air doesn't smell right. He knows what the woods should smell like, and this ain't it. Some of it is, that damp, rotting leaves smell, but it's fainter than it should be, artificial almost, and there's something else, too. Metallic. Makes him think of crime scenes and furtive trips to the middle-of-nowhere with red-stained shovels. Only that blood smell usually comes from somewhere, something, someone. It gets stronger in a certain direction. But this smell is everywhere, like it's part of everything around them, seeping from the ground and the trees and the leaves and the corpse-white sun.

He ain't the only one who's noticed something's screwy, either. Reese is marching along like it's business as usual, with that same grim-faced determination he always has, expression only shifting into something else when he checks up on Finch. Reese looks ready to kill, in mind and capability, even without his guns.

But _Finch_, man. Finch keeps getting this _look_ on his face, something between extremely confused and freaked out. Every now and then, Finch will turn to him, looking like he's about to say something, then get that _No, he'll just think I'm bugfuck crazy_ face and shut his mouth. Except Finch would never say something like "bugfuck crazy," but that's beside the point. It's Finch that convinces him that he's not losing his marbles here, that something's not right.

And then Finch freezes. He stops so suddenly in the middle of the path that Lionel slams into his back, almost knocking him over. Lionel catches him, spilling a ton of apologies as he sets Finch to rights, but Finch doesn't respond. Not to "Glasses" or "Professor" or even "Finch."

Reese flashes him a dirty look that evaporates the second he sees Finch's face, just as Lionel's saying, "Harold, buddy, you all right?"

Finch is staring straight ahead, eyes wide, mouth dangling open, every silent inch of him screaming _terrified_, from the spiky, sweaty rat's nest on his head to the tips of his scuffed-up oxfords. Lionel's guts turn to ice. You don't want to see the only half-sane member of your party looking like that, especially when it's followed by them asking, "Am I the only one who is seeing..._that?_"

"Seeing what?" Lionel blurts out. "What is it, Glasses?"

"Glasses," Finch repeats, under his breath. "Oh, of course."

"Harold?" Reese asks, worried, almost tender. He starts toward Finch, and Finch's bulging eyes bug out even more.

"No, don't turn your back on it!"

Reese doesn't. He looks back in the direction they were heading, then says, gentle and patient, "Harold, there's nothing there."

Lionel knows he should agree with Reese, maybe make a joke about Finch going crazy, about Finch seeing things. Just for show. It's half-formed in the back of his brain and everything, because that's what he does when situations get too emotional or hinky or just plain weird. But he _can't_ this time. Because the woods are all wrong and he keeps seeing something and that metal smell is getting stronger and Harold fucking Finch is horrified.

"That is exactly the problem," Finch says. Then, he takes off his glasses, drops them to the ground, and grinds them into the dirt and leaves with a noisy crunch of glass and plastic. "We need to keep moving." He locks arms with Reese and steps forward, saying, "Keep walking, don't threaten it, and, whatever you do, _do not turn your back on it._"

"How the hell are we supposed to do that if we can't even see it?" Lionel demands. "You could see it with your glasses on, but now—"

"Because I can still see it, Detective," Finch says, quietly, "far more clearly than I should be able to with my eyesight." He limps ahead of Reese, just for a second, but like hell will Reese let Finch be without his big, menacing human shield in front of him out here. "Keep walking. Just keep walking, and everything will be fine."

Lionel knows when to do what he's told. He keeps walking. With every step, that feeling like ice in his belly rolls around, sickening and heavy in his guts. His nerves are on edge, every single one crackling with tension and that prickling sense that he's being watched, closely, and needs to be ready to strike back. His hand keeps twitching to his hip, where his sidearm should be but isn't.

He keeps getting flickers at the edges of his vision, more now than before, more obvious. And it's dark—darker than dark. Pitch black, the kind of black you don't get anywhere back in New York. He sees it wherever he glances, like it's everywhere, whatever the hell _it_ is. Smells like it, too. God, that _smell_...

He kind of wishes he had his reading glasses, just so he could maybe see whatever the hell it is that has them all hauling ass. They're going to have to stop soon. Lionel's been keeping a close eye on Finch. He's like their barometer, the weirdness meter heralding—_Harold the herald, ha_—when shit's going to go sideways. And Finch is hurting, his limp getting worse with every step, his breathing louder and harsher than anyone else's. Every now and then, Finch stumbles, but that just seems to spur him on, making him push himself harder.

Reese moves like he doesn't feel it at all, the bastard, but keeps pace with Finch, walking like he practices staying side-by-side with Finch in the mirror. That kind of mental image would usually make him laugh—Reese practicing how to walk perfectly with Finch, like a model getting ready for the catwalk. But nothing seems all that funny right now.

God, he just wants to go home.

Lionel stays behind them, covering them from the rear. He's not going to do them much good without his gun, or with his legs and feet and lungs feeling like they're on fire from walking for so long, but he's a cop. He's going to do his best to protect and serve the civilian, even if his best is nowhere near good enough. Even if it means being the other human shield. Even if it means feeling like something without eyes is staring at the back of his head, like something without lungs is breathing down the back of his neck.

There's nothing back there, he tells himself. But it doesn't look like there's anything in front of them, either. Don't turn your back on it—hell. He feels like he already did.

Finch's bad leg gives out. With a startled cry, he goes down, and Reese barely catches him before he hits the dirt. "I've got you," Reese whispers, pulling Finch close. "It's okay, Harold. It's okay."

"It's not," Finch says, leaning heavily against Reese's side, panting hard between little whimpering breaths. "Be—mm." He rubs at his hip, his thigh. "Be grateful you cannot see just how 'not okay' our predicament is, John."

Lionel steps up beside them, and the unsettling feeling at his back gets worse the closer he gets to Finch, oppressive and heavy and cold, seeping down his collar like thin fingers of icy black. Jesus, it's freaky, like the thing's targeting Finch. "Anything I can do?" he asks.

"Yes," Finch says. "You can go on without me—both of you."

Lionel and Reese both protest that immediately, their words crashing over each other, and Lionel's shocked by the vehemence of his own, "Oh, hell no. I ain't leaving anybody."

"I don't leave people," Reese says. "You know that. I'm not leaving you."

"You should," Finch says. "This..._thing_, it's not after either of you. It's after me. My m—" He glances toward Lionel, and corrects himself. "_I_ saw it. It does not like being seen, and I saw it."

"So this ain't about the girl we were saving?"

"Mrs. Vaughan is not involved in this, no," Finch says. He tries to straighten up and stand on his own, and almost goes down again, grunting with pain. "Go home to your child, Detective. Your son needs you. John, please, see that he gets home safe."

Without hesitation, Reese scoops Finch up in his arms, growling, "I'm not leaving you."

"Hell, let the monster get me," Lionel says, and Finch shuts his eyes with a small, anguished groan. "I've done some real bad things in my life, Harold. Leaving you behind ain't gonna be one of them."

He's called Finch "Harold" twice tonight. That's gotta be a record.

"We're gonna get through this, all right?" he continues. "All three of us. I'm not a pep talk kind of guy—I'll leave that to the guys with vocabularies like yours. But you know what I think, Glasses? I think we should get going again, and we should keep going, and we should get the hell out of here without leaving anybody behind."

He steps forward, and something crunches beneath his foot, like glass and plastic. He looks down, and his blood curdles. It's a pair of glasses—Finch's glasses. And this cluster of trees looks nothing like the ones around them where he dropped them.

The air at his back changes. It's colder now, like countless pistols pressed to every inch of his spine. He shudders, and takes another step forward. It follows, just a second behind him, _right there_. Oh, god, he's pissed it off. But if there's one thing he's good at, it's pissing dangerous things off—HR, drug dealers, mob guys, that creep holding Finch close to his chest like Finch is the most precious thing in his world. And now, this thing.

He's survived all the other nasties. Fuck it.

He whirls around, and yells, "Hey, you!" at the top of his lungs. "You can't have him! Harold here is ours, and you ain't gettin' him. We may not like him all the time, we may want to punch him in his prissy little mouth sometimes—" At that, Finch laughs softly. "—but he's ours. And you ain't gettin' him. So you might as well give up now, and—"

Something cold slams into him, deep as a bullet, clenches around every organ in his chest and his gut. It's cold, it's cold, it's _cold_, and it fucking hurts, and he can't breathe. What the hell, he can't breathe, and everything _hurts_. He clutches at his chest and his belly, at his stuttering heart and cramping bowels, trying to ease it, trying to soothe it, trying to reach in and yank the _thing_ out out out, and he can't. The world goes dark around him, blacker than black, and he can hear Finch and Reese saying stuff, doing stuff from miles away, and he can't tell what.

Then he can't hear them at all.

"You have made a grave mistake," the thing says, its booming voice filling his skull, his limbs, his blood, even the deep and hidden places inside him that he didn't know were there.

Lionel lets out a bitter, painful laugh. He can taste blood and ice in his mouth, salt and metal and cold and dark dripping down his chin. "I've made a hell of a lot of those," he shoots back. "Helping these guys ain't one of them."

"The man calling himself Harold Finch has caused my kind great trouble. He must be held accountable. He must be destroyed."

Oh, for crying out loud. "Finch is a huge pain in my ass, too. Doesn't mean I want him dead. He helps people. He's helped me a hell of a lot—he and his guy. Could probably help you, too, if you'd let 'em."

"We are not people. And his machine has caused us much grief." The thing goes quiet for a moment, like it's considering something. Lionel ignores the impulse to ask what machine it's talking about. "Are you truly so willing to die for this man, Lionel Fusco?"

Lionel can't help himself—he laughs again. "You think you're the first big and sinister dirtbag who's told me I'm gonna die? You ain't even the first one this week. Shit, you ain't even the first one _today_.

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm willing to die for him—him and Wonderboy. I put my ass on the line every day for worse scumbags than Glasses. And I'd wager that makes me a much braver guy than you'll ever be, you shadowy piece of garbage. Look at you—hiding out here in the woods, not even showing your face. You're gonna kill me, and I don't even know what you look like, you pathetic little fuck."

The air drops ten, twenty degrees, the thing's wrath getting colder and colder. Lionel's just gets hotter.

"You know something?" he says. "I figured out a long time ago who to respect and who not to. And you know who I don't respect? I got no respect for the guys who tell me they're gonna kill me and won't look me in the eyes when they do it. So you can either get your ass out of my body and show yourself and look me in the eyes when you take me out, or you can fuck off and leave us alone, 'cause we're way past sick of your crap."

"We do not like to be seen," the thing says.

"Yeah? And I don't like near-death-experiences, so I guess we're pretty even, huh."

The thing goes quiet again. Then, it says, "Open your eyes, Lionel Fusco. And you will see."

Lionel opens his eyes—he thought they were still open, but apparently not. He sees...nothing. The woods are gone, Finch and Reese are gone, everything is gone except for him and nothing, the biggest stretch of inexplicable, indescribable nothing. He is alone, all alone, just a small speck of a human being in the middle of a vast, silent, gaping void.

Except...no. No, he's not alone in the void at all. There's something else, something older than him, something bigger, something that could eat him alive and feel like it swallowed a crumb. Something darker than the void. Something ugly.

God, it's ugly. It's the ugliest thing he's ever seen.

"This is what will happen to you. You will be erased. You will be nothing. It will be like you and Harold Finch and John Reese never existed at all. Your lives will no longer exist. Your contributions will no longer exist. Your son will no longer exist."

That's like a hit to the gut. Lee, gone, wiped out of existence entirely by some evil shadowy thing. And he can't let that happen—he _can't_.

"And you and your friends will feel every instant of your own nothingness until the end of eternity, with me."

It should be terrifying to think about. But instead of thinking of that, Lionel suddenly thinks of Carter when Elias took her kid. She could've let Elias have those old mafia dons, could've handed those slimy monsters over and saved her boy without Reese's help. She didn't.

Finch is not a monster like those dons. Finch is a good man. Not perfect—really unlikable sometimes, completely annoying at others, and always more than a little bit creepy—but good. So is Reese, in his own way. Both of them put together have made Lionel into a much better person. He was a real sad sack that day he became part of a probably-long line of people who've tried to put John Reese in the ground. He still is kind of a sad sack, if he's honest with himself, but he's helping people now instead of hiding their bodies. He's got a long way to go, but he's not so ashamed of the guy in the mirror anymore.

And like hell is he going to just hand over either of these guys to this thing. Not without putting up one hell of a fight.

"So, in other words, you're saying I'm going to Hell—or somewhere like it." Lionel rolls his eyes. "Tell me something I didn't already know." Then he straightens up, and raises his fists. "Bring it on, tough guy," he says. And, with a guttural howl of rage, he charges into the void.

He can't tell you what happens next—he doesn't know. But he wakes up alive, lying on the ground, panting for breath, Finch's buggy-eyed, worried face hovering over him. Reese looms nearby, scanning the periphery every now and then. Everything hurts. Parts of him burn like they've been cut open, the rest feels like an unending, all-over bruise. He's pretty sure some of his ribs are cracked—a familiar feeling. And there's something sticking into the back of his head, like a stick.

"Ow," he says, reaching for it, weak arm flopping almost uselessly toward his head. But he gets there. He grabs hold of the stick as he's saying, "Ow," again, and it's not a stick at all. It's a piece of Finch's glasses. He sits up, groaning and cussing up a storm with pain. Moving is kind of a mistake. It looks like he won, but his body feels like the loser, sore all the way to his bones. Better than dead, though. A lot better.

"Here." He waves the piece of glasses toward Finch. "Think this belongs to you."

Finch gapes at it for a moment, dumbstruck. Jeez, Finch looks so weird without his glasses. But Finch is alive. They all are.

When Finch doesn't speak, Lionel fills the silence, asking, "Is it gone?"

That jolts Finch out of his stupor. "Yes, Detective," he says, seemingly trying to move as little as possible as he takes the piece of plastic from Lionel's hand. "I believe the...entity is gone, for now." He eyes the broken piece, a dissatisfied look on his face, then holds it out to Reese. "I can't tell for sure, Mr. Reese, but I'm afraid I may have destroyed your latest tracker. Sorry about that."

While Lionel _stares_ at them, wide-eyed with disbelief—tracking devices, what the hell? Wonderboy keeps a tracker on Finch? It's not all that surprising, really, but it's still creepy. How the hell can any two people be that shamelessly _weird? _Have neither of them heard of boundaries? Sheesh—Reese tucks the fragment into his pocket and says, "But you're not."

"No, I'm not." Finch turns to Lionel, and says, "Thank you, Lionel. What you just did...I am incredibly grateful. I owe you a debt."

"Nah." Lionel gets to his feet, not resisting when Reese offers a hand to help. Standing _sucks_, but he doesn't fall over. He doesn't fall over, and he didn't die, and no one else died. It's a win. They're all winners right here, right now. "I think I was just paying you back. Though I wouldn't turn down season tickets for all my favorite teams. Pretty sure you know who they are, right, Professor Creepy?"

It's not the best nickname he's come up with, but he's off his game right now. Finch's lips twitch in a tiny smile all the same. "I do believe that can be arranged." Then, abruptly, his face falls. He watches something over Lionel's shoulder with horror that goes undisguised just for a moment, before a perfectly neutral expression takes its place. A chill runs through Lionel's blood. "But we need to go now. It's getting dark."

Lionel turns around. He doesn't want to, but he _has_ to. At the far edge of the woods, he sees something dark and old and ugly. Something big. That metallic stink fills the air again.

"Yeah," he says, proud of how little his voice shakes. "I think it's way past time the three of us got the hell out of Dodge."


End file.
